{"id":907247,"date":"2026-09-24T01:06:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T01:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/907247\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T01:06:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T01:06:16","slug":"sam-smith-normani-dancing-with-a-stranger-lawsuit-heads-to-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/907247\/","title":{"rendered":"Sam Smith, Normani \u2018Dancing With A Stranger\u2019 Lawsuit Heads to Trial"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe lawsuit claiming Sam Smith<\/a> and Normani<\/a>\u2019s multi-platinum dance hit \u201cDancing With A Stranger\u201d stole its hook from a 2015 song by the same name is heading to trial<\/a> after a federal judge in Los Angeles rejected the musical duo\u2019s latest bid to toss the case.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a 27-page ruling issued Wednesday and obtained by Rolling Stone, U.S. District Judge Wesley L. Hsu denied a motion by Smith and Normani that sought to end the case in their favor based on the evidence developed since the case was first filed in March 2022.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPlaintiffs have sufficiently introduced an issue of material fact regarding striking similarity and independent creation which precludes a finding of no copyright infringement on summary judgment,\u201d Judge Hsu wrote. The ruling was in keeping with a tentative position he outlined during oral arguments at a hearing on Sept. 11.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe long-running lawsuit<\/a> was filed four years ago, got dismissed the following year<\/a>, and was later revived on appeal<\/a>. In July, lawyers for Smith and Normani again asked the court to throw out the case, arguing that experts for the plaintiff songwriters Jordan Vincent, Christopher Miranda, and Rosco Banlao had failed to show the \u201cstriking similarity\u201d needed to keep the claims alive. Judge Hsu disagreed.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHere, defendants would have the court compare pitch sequences alone, then rhythm alone, then metric placement alone, then contour alone. Disassemble any two works enough, and neither would resemble anything,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

\n\tHsu said there was no \u201cwell-defined standard\u201d for determining when similarities in the selection and arrangement of musical elements become \u201cstriking.\u201d But he said the Ninth Circuit, the federal appeals court that oversees California, has made clear that \u201canalyzing each element in isolation is improper.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe judge also found a \u201cdispute of material fact\u201d over the defendants\u2019 claim that the plaintiffs\u2019 2015 song, \u201cDancing With a Stranger,\u201d incorporated unauthorized samples from two other copyrighted works and therefore was not entitled to protection. The judge said Smith, Normani, and the other defendants had failed to establish that the plaintiffs\u2019 song was derived from those alleged unauthorized samples.<\/p>\n

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\n\tMeanwhile, the defendants\u2019 claims that they created their 2019 song independently, without any access to the plaintiffs\u2019 song, didn\u2019t matter at this stage of the case, the judge found.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEvidence of independent creation is insufficient to justify summary judgment, as it must be weighed against plaintiff\u2019s prima facie case of copying,\u201d the judge wrote. \u201cThe court finds the question of independent creation should be left for the jury to decide.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe lead lawyer for Smith, Normani and the other defendants, including Universal Music Group, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Rolling Stone. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe three songwriters who are Sound and Color [the group behind the 2015 song] are gratified that the District Court has recognized that a jury should decide the musicological issues in this case to determine whether Sam Smith and defendants stole \u2018Dancing With A Stranger,\u2019 one of the biggest hits in 2019,\u201d plaintiffs\u2019 lawyer Alfred J. Fluehr with the firm Francis Alexander said in a statement to Rolling Stone. \u201cPreviously in the case, the Ninth Circuit came to the same conclusion \u2026 We look forward to our day in court.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the hearing two weeks ago, Peter Anderson, a lawyer for the defendants, argued that the lawsuit suffered from a fatal flaw because the plaintiffs\u2019 2015 song incorporated unauthorized samples from \u201cThe Ha Dance,\u201d by Masters at Work, and \u201cThink (About It),\u201d by Lyn Collins. Copyright protection, he argued, does not extend to portions of a work that unlawfully incorporate preexisting copyrighted material.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cThe two samples run throughout the plaintiff\u2019s work. Specifically, those two samples run throughout the hook, which is the only alleged similarity,\u201d Anderson said. \u201cPlaintiff\u2019s counsel says they\u2019re virtually imperceptible. Well, that means they\u2019re perceptible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFluehr responded that the dispute ultimately turned on \u201ca musicological dispute, [and] that\u2019s for a jury.\u201d Judge Hsu highlighted that argument. <\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cWhat they\u2019re arguing here is that the protectable hook is not itself a sample,\u201d the judge said on Sept. 11. He took the matter under submission at the end of the 45-minute hearing.<\/p>\n

\n\tQuestions about earlier musical works have loomed over the case throughout the years-long litigation. Before either song at the center of the dispute was released, Cyndi Lauper recorded a 1989 song titled \u201cDancing With A Stranger.\u201d The Eurobeat artist Regina also released \u201cDancing With an Angel\u201d in 1997, which lawyers for Smith and Normani have said contains a descending melodic phrase similar to the passages now at issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The lawsuit claiming Sam Smith and Normani\u2019s multi-platinum dance hit \u201cDancing With A Stranger\u201d stole its hook from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":907248,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,7562,17537,75,341,63659,22530],"class_list":["post-907247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-controversy","tag-courts-and-crime","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-normani","tag-sam-smith"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=907247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/907248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=907247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=907247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=907247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}